The Skeleton Garden Read online

  “Thanks, Simon,” Orlando said, relieving Simon of the bags.

  “It was no trouble,” Simon said, digging his hand in his trouser pocket. “You did your part, you sorting out my—”

  Orlando cut him off. “We met the fellow who trims the hedges. In Romsey. Simon was explaining to me about yew and how you can cut it down to the wood and it’ll sprout again—what did you call it, Simon, breaking from old wood? And that’s why there are so many ancient yew trees. Is that right?”

  Simon looked pleased, Pru suspicious at Orlando’s sudden interest in the physiology of yews.

  “I’ll take these up now,” Orlando said, grabbing the bags. “Aunt Pru, I’m not sure if I should use the wardrobe or the chest in my room. Can you come up and show me?”

  Pru eyed this compliant, helpful Orlando, sensing a dodge, but wouldn’t argue with a teenager who wanted to tidy his room. “Sure. Thanks, Simon,” Pru said to her brother. “We’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Chapter 8

  The three gardeners gathered on the parterre lawn Friday morning, well wrapped up for the cold and exhaling clouds of fog into the chilly air. Orlando wore a new, charity-shop wardrobe—a purple coat over green trousers and jumper. Pru turned for a sweeping view of the hedged garden, taking in the generously planted corners and the gravel paths lined with neat boxwood. Two paths cut the large space into quarters; at three points, arched entrances had been sheared into the yew. In the center, a large circle had been defined with boxwood, planted in an intricate Celtic-knot design. Deep planting beds in each corner of the garden held a mix of shrubs and perennials.

  “Hebe topiaria.” Simon nodded to several small gray-leaved shrubs among the fading autumn flowers in one of the corner plantings. “I put seven in each bed to get that repetition of color and form—and to be a bit different from box balls.”

  Orlando snorted. Pru arched an eyebrow. “Boxwood,” Pru said. “Boxwood that is sheared into round forms. Box balls.”

  “Yes, Aunt Pru,” he replied, coloring. He pointed to a mound in the back corner. “That one looks a bit greener than the rest.”

  Simon squinted at the form. “Right—that one is a box. One of the hebes looked peaky—too much shade back there—so I took it out and put in a box instead. That makes six hebes in this section, and one box.”

  “There’re only four now,” Orlando said. “Four of the gray ones.”

  Pru glanced at Simon out of the corner of her eye. She didn’t like to challenge him so early in the morning; it only led to bickering, followed by a row. But Simon didn’t seem to mind.

  “I’ll just check,” he said and began flipping through a bound black notebook. Its corners were worn through to cardboard, and its wrinkled and spotted pages were filled with penciled scribbles, lists, drawings smeared with soil, and the occasional plant tag or magazine photo taped down. “Must be in one of the others. Orlando, nip back to the shed and bring back the next book on top of the stack.”

  “Good, well-drained soil here for hebes,” Pru said to Simon, while they waited for Orlando to return.

  “It is that,” her brother replied. “This whole area used to be a graveled yard.”

  “I saw that on an old map Christopher has. It had an X marked right in the center,” she said, pointing without thought to the center of the circle where, set off by a small ring of boxwood surrounded by the Celtic knot, stood a half-dead tree. Pru averted her eyes. This was a sore subject with Simon.

  He had noticed her gaze. “Orlando,” he said, as the boy returned and handed over another worn journal, “bring me a long-handled spade from the shed. It’s time we had that out.” Orlando scampered off, and Simon approached the small tree. Pru followed.

  The silver foliage of the weeping willowleaf pear had started losing its leaves in August. Simon had planted it seven years earlier in honor of Harry and Vernona Wilson’s fortieth wedding anniversary, and it had never grown more than a foot in all that time.

  “I amended the soil in the tree pit, but could be there’s more gravel below than I thought.” Simon studied the ground as if trying to see through to the tree’s roots.

  “You really shouldn’t amend the soil when you plant a tree,” Pru said. “The roots can end up just circling the hole, never getting out into the native soil. They don’t establish well.”

  Simon flipped through the notebook and sent a plant tag flying off the page. “I know how to plant a tree,” he said, not looking at Pru.

  Pru pushed on through the yellow caution light. “All I’m saying is that if you want to replant—maybe something else would be better. What if there’s root rot?”

  “That’s unlikely, as the soil is so fast-draining.”

  “Do you have a website for the garden?” Their heads turned. Orlando had appeared with a spade and a timely distraction.

  “Why would we need a website?” Simon asked, jabbing at a page in the second book. “There, planted four years ago spring. Hebe topiaria—ah, I see now, it was five of them first planted after all.”

  “You could keep track of all the plants in the garden—what dies and what doesn’t. And won’t the magazine people want to know things before they arrive? Where to go to see the…” He nodded toward a mounded plant that sported a final blue flower.

  “Asters,” Pru said, imagining the parterre through the eyes of a professional photographer and feeling that familiar stab of panic.

  “They can ask us—they don’t need to look at a computer,” Simon replied.

  “What if you can’t find it in your books?” Orlando asked. “You could…” He caught sight of Simon’s glare and his mouth snapped shut.

  “I’ll get another spade and help.” Pru locked her arm through Orlando’s and took him along to the shed. “Look,” she said quietly, “it’s just that it was a special tree planted for the Wilsons, and Simon is sorry that it hasn’t thrived. It’s put him in a bit of a bad mood. He’ll be fine.”

  She took two spades from the wall, and they returned to the parterre to find Simon already digging; they joined in. Ten minutes later, Simon pulled the tree out by its skinny trunk, revealing a pitifully small spray of roots. A few more leaves fluttered to the ground.

  “Would you look at that.” Simon held the trunk up like a baton. “There’s nothing to it. Well,” he said, “it was a dry summer this year—and last as well. I suppose I should’ve watered it more.”

  “Are you going to plant another tree?” Orlando asked from his position sprawled out on the nearby lawn.

  “Not until we find out what this soil is really like,” Pru said. “Let’s dig down and see.”

  Simon plunged his spade into the soil. “Right,” he said.

  “Orlando,” Pru called over her shoulder. “You, too.”

  “It’s a bit tight over there, Aunt Pru. I wouldn’t want to get in your way.”

  “Well then, we’ll widen the hole just to accommodate you. Come along.”

  The hole grew and deepened. The soil—loose, dry, and gravelly—began to weigh on them, each spadeful heavier than the last. Soon Pru stripped off her jacket and the fleece under it. Simon shed his sheepskin jacket, and Orlando tossed aside his thick sweater with sleeves so long he had used them as gloves. Pru thought they’d stop when they got to another soil profile—a streak of clay, a layer of loam, bedrock, anything different—but they were four feet down and still no sign of change.

  “The tea is poured—are you not coming in?” Evelyn stood over them at the edge of the pit. “Whatever are you doing?” she asked, her eyes taking in the scene.

  Orlando jumped out and Simon tossed his spade onto the ground. “I suppose we have got carried away,” he said.

  “Just trying to sort out why the tree didn’t do well,” Pru said. “It’s odd that there’s so much gravel here.” She sank her spade in again, and brought up a load of soil, gravel, and a piece of twisted metal as big as a stepping-stone. It had jagged, rusted edges. She picked it out and held it up to the others. She c
ould see a bit of white paint and something black, like charring.

  Simon reached for his spade and began digging again. “Peachey hasn’t buried any of his old cars out here, has he, Evelyn?”

  Evelyn didn’t dignify that with an answer, but remained at the pit and watched, along with Orlando, as Pru and Simon dug further, until they hit a larger piece of metal with a rounded top. Pru knelt down, scooped away the gravelly soil, and leaned back to get a better view. The tail of a plane stuck out of the soil like a shark’s fin, with an emblem painted in black-and-white on the side that looked remarkably like a swastika.

  Chapter 9

  A gust of wind swept a few cold drops of rain onto their faces. No one spoke for what seemed like ages until Orlando asked, “Is it real?”

  “Awfully big for a toy,” Simon replied.

  “I went on a school trip to Duxford once—the Imperial War Museum,” Orlando said. “We got to fly a Spitfire on a simulator.” He grabbed hold of imaginary controls in the cockpit. “It was brilliant.” He stuck his hands back in his pockets, jerked his head dismissively, and said, “But I was just a kid then.”

  What was the precedent for this, Pru wondered. The war was over. “Should we phone Christopher? Or Martin?”

  “I’m not sure what they could do—pin a medal on someone?” Simon snapped his fingers. “Stan Snuggs. He grew up here—he may remember something. I’ll go and fetch him. Why don’t you let up until we get back?” he asked Pru. “Orlando, come along.”

  Pru looked around—Evelyn had disappeared from the edge of the pit without anyone noticing. She dusted herself off and walked to the house. The cook sat at the kitchen table, staring at the pot of tea in front of her. She didn’t move when Pru entered.

  “Evelyn,” Pru said, carefully sitting down, as if a wrong move could destabilize world peace. “I’m sorry we missed our tea. We were caught up with digging and—well, did you see what we’ve found? It might be a German plane, buried out there in the garden. At least, part of a plane. The most I ever found digging in my garden in Texas was a little toy truck with the name of an oil company painted on the side.”

  Evelyn blinked at the teapot. “My ma was a Land Girl,” she said. “During the war. She was up at Home Farm.”

  A real conversation. “I’ve heard of Land Girls,” Pru said. “The Women’s Land Army. Women all over Britain worked on farms and grew food for the country during the war.”

  “It was a shock, that’s all, seeing a German plane here in this garden. Makes all her stories about the war seem so real.”

  “I didn’t know you grew up here.”

  Evelyn inclined her head slightly and drew a handkerchief out of an apron pocket and twisted it round her fingers. “My ma came down in ’39 from Croydon, south of London. Planted onions and cabbages and mucked out the barns even though she’d never had her hands in the dirt before. It was her duty to work for the war effort, she said. I was born at the end of the war. Ma went to work at the Blackbird, and the two of us lived in the little cottage out the back.” She heaved a great sigh.

  Yes, that’s right, now Pru remembered—Dick said that Evelyn’s mother worked the bar. But Pru didn’t know of any cottage behind the pub, just an old storage shed that had seen better days. Oh dear, she thought.

  “I’d love to hear what work your mother did on the farm.” Pru put her hands around the teapot. “Oh, it’s still warm. Shall I pour?”

  Evelyn nodded to the pot. “That tea’ll be stewed.”

  “Right,” Pru said, jumping up. “I’ll put the kettle on.”

  Evelyn didn’t move, and Pru marveled at the leaps and bounds they were making in their relationship—Evelyn would never have let Pru touch the kettle before this, not when she was around, at any rate. But just as Pru readied to pour up a new pot, Orlando appeared at the door. “Mr. Snuggs is here,” he said, nodding out toward the parterre lawn.

  “Evelyn, would you like to come out and see what we find?” Pru asked.

  Evelyn stood up, picked up a wooden mallet and began pounding a piece of meat on the counter. “I’ve no time to stand around and gawk—I’ve your lunch to sort out, and dinners to prepare.”

  —

  “So, Stan, do you remember this plane crashing?” Simon was asking when Pru and Orlando returned to the pit.

  “I can’t quite set a date on it—the bombs and crashes became almost common. But I seem to recall this one, now that I stand here,” Stan said. “I remember there was no pilot—seems he parachuted out and was tracked down in the wood. After the excitement died down, old man Saxsby—that would be Vernona Wilson’s great-uncle—decided he’d bury it. We had planes crashing here, there, and everywhere those years—and bombs almost every night, at least at the beginning. It was great excitement for a boy—I was barely ten at the start of the war—near to sixteen toward the end.”

  Pru had hopped down into the pit, but paused with her spade as she felt a constriction around her heart. “Our mother was almost sixteen at the end of the war.” She felt Simon watching her, and she blinked at the thought of what a young girl had to go through with bombs and crashes and air raids.

  “And where did she live?” Stan asked.

  “Ibsley,” Pru and Simon answered as one. “That’s where I was born,” Simon said.

  “She died five—no, six years ago,” Pru said. Simon, of course, had lost her long before that.

  “I’d say she had a few stories to tell,” Stan said.

  Pru ransacked the storage shelves in her mind, looking for a wartime tidbit she could share—not with Stan, but with Simon. “A shelter! They had one of those”—Pru waved her hand over her head—“those small metal shelters in the garden. They’d have to go out to it during air raids.”

  “An Anderson shelter?” Simon asked. “Birdie and George had one—I played in it when I was a lad. Got rid of it in the ’60s and planted apple trees on the spot.” He stared down at his hands. “Those’ll need pruning this winter.”

  “We’d go down into the cellars at the Duke,” Stan said, “the Blackbird as it turned into. Might be twenty of us: Jimmy Chatters, Kitty, her mum and dad—if he was able—and my mum. Have a cuppa, play a game of draughts. My mum always knitting. Listen to the engines overhead and wait for the whistling sound of the bombs.”

  “Ah, so here you all are,” Kitty Bassett said, walking through the hedge opening. She had on a shapeless black coat buttoned up to her chin and a maroon scarf pulled tight over her head, the ends tucked inside. Close on her heels was Sonia, and behind the duck, a young woman.

  She was tall and wore a leotard and layers of leggings—thin, black fabric stretched tightly over her willowy figure. The layers were topped by a sheer, pink A-line pinafore made of stiff fabric; black, midcalf boots with chunky heels and laces finished her ensemble. A thick, gray woolly cap pulled over her ears set off her round face and round eyes. In lieu of a coat to keep her warm, she had wrapped her arms around herself and stood with a solemn expression and head at a tilt, watching the activity.

  “Morning, Kitty,” Pru said, then turned to the girl. “And you must be Jemima—hello.”

  “Hello, yes, pleased to meet you, Ms. Parke,” Jemima said in a voice far too serious for the circumstances.

  “Kitty, Jemima, this is Orlando Barnes, our nephew who is staying with us.” Pru glanced at Orlando who stood frozen, unblinking, eyes on Jemima.

  The girl’s gaze landed briefly on Orlando, then fluttered to earth like a butterfly. She murmured, “Hello.”

  Orlando’s head bobbed up and down, and his mouth opened, but nothing came out.

  “I spied those three in the lane,” Kitty said, nodding to Simon, Stan, and Orlando. “You looked as if you were on a mission. We thought we’d come along and see what was afoot. And look here”—she pointed to the tail of the plane—“Germans.”

  “So now, Kitty, were you ready to set your ducks on them?” Simon asked.

  “I’d say the Germans wouldn’t want to meet
my runners in a dark lane.”

  Pru and Simon returned to digging. Orlando stayed where he was and kept glancing at Jemima, who seemed not to notice.

  As they worked, Pru saw Evelyn standing just inside the opening of the hedge. She held a kitchen chair and beckoned to Orlando, who carried the chair to Kitty.

  Simon leaned over to pick up a dial, only a few inches across. Broken wires stuck out the back, and the shattered glass obscured the face. “Here you are now.” He climbed out and handed it to Stan, who turned it over and over in his hands.

  “Galaxy Raiders had a story line about a buried ship. The Copernicus once plunged into the sand on the planet Drooz,” Orlando said, gingerly inspecting a ragged slice of metal before laying it on the ground. “It was buried for a century. They found their way out again by reversing time so that they could get back to fight in the Tucana wars.”

  All heads turned to the boy, but no one spoke, until Jemima, wide eyes widening even further, said, “May the galactic winds be at your back.”

  Orlando straightened up and thrust his chin in the air. “May the suns of Sequentia light your path,” he replied, then glanced round at their audience and turned red.

  Christopher’s car pulled into the drive and caught everyone’s attention. When he walked into the garden, Pru stood five feet deep in the pit and spread her arms in presentation. “Have you come to view our find?”

  Christopher scanned the assortment of metal pieces, bits of the control panel, and the tail—by far the largest piece and still sticking out of the ground. “This is amazing,” he said. “Do you think Harry and Vernona knew about it?”

  Simon laughed. “Harry would only want to know if you find a Roman chariot in the bottom.”

  “How did you hear?” Pru asked and used the momentary break in action to take out her hair clip, secure several loose bits, and reclip.

  “Kitty rang,” Christopher said, lifting his eyebrows. Kitty was wont to ring him at the drop of a hat. “ ‘There’s a bit of history being unearthed in your garden,’ she said.”